Jack Canfield: How To Apply The Universal Success Principles
How do you stop being a victim, take responsibility, and make your life the life you want it to be? In this episode, we uncover the universal principles of success with one of the world’s top success experts, Jack Canfield.
Jack Canfield, known as America's #1 Success Coach, is the co-author of more than 200 books, including, The Success Principles™: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, The Success Principles Workbook, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, which includes 40 New York Times bestsellers and has sold more than 500 million copies in 47 languages around the world. He holds two Guinness World Record titles and is a member of the National Speakers Association’s Speaker Hall of Fame.
Are the principles of success universal or idiosyncratic to individuals?
The people who are super successful all do similar things.
The activities, worksheets, and exercises you need to execute for success.
There are universal principles of success, and if you apply them, they work.
4 phases of consciousness:
Victim
Learn the laws of success
Discover the universal force
Discover that you are part of the universal force
“If it happens on time its called education, if it happens late it’s called therapy"
Take 100% Responsibility for Your life and Your Results
E + R = O
Event + Response = Outcome
It’s not the event that determines who you are, it's your response to the event.
You’re not a victim, you’re never a victim.
Five Ms of Success
Meditation
Mindfulness - stop, scan your body every hour
Movement - move every day
Mastery - stay present, working on what you’re good at
How do you stop being a victim, take responsibility, and make your life the life you want it to be?
Blame and excuses don’t produce useful outcomes, you have to TAKE RESPONSIBILITY.
Would you rather be happy or rather be right?
It never serves you to be a victim.. and you will stay stuck as long as you keep doing what you’re doing.
Ask yourself: WHO DO YOU BLAME FOR WHAT IN YOUR LIFE?
You have to give up BLAME and you have to give up COMPLAINING.
You don’t complain about things you can’t change. No one complaint about gravity.
Complaining doesn’t ever get you what you want… but it’s risk-free.
Doing the thing that gets you what you want requires you to take a RISK
Excuse making holds you back massively from being successful.
Awareness + Risk = Success
Most people are not successful because they would rather be COMFORTABLE than do what is NECESSARY to be successful.
Ask for what you want, and ASK BIG.
Howard Schultz was turned down by 217 banks before he was able to get the capital to open his first Starbucks store.
Most risks are not nearly as big as you think they are.
Get over the fear of rejection.. you already have a NO if you don’t ask.
You have to take risks to go to the next level.
What’s a one-year goal that would be a quantum leap or a breakthrough for your life?
Find 3 things that would help you get to your goal.. and get 9 people to say no to each thing.
It’s a number game.. the more people you ask the more likely you are to get a yes. It's the law of probabilities.
No’s aren’t personal, often people just aren’t in a position to give you a yes.
You can even follow up back with people who’ve already told you no.
ASK ASK ASK ASK ASK ASK ASK ASK ASK ASK ASK ASK
Become an ASK-HOLE. Ask for what you want.
“If you can’t, you must”
There’s nothing to be afraid of, it’s just your mind scaring you.
ASK: “ I would really like to ______, but I scare myself by imagining _________ will happen if I do."
When you’re feeling fear, say to yourself: "Oh what the heck, go for it anyway."
The only question people ask after they do the thing they were afraid of is “why didn’t I do this sooner?"
Homework: Do the thing you haven’t done. TAKE ACTION. It’s not enough to know these things, you have to take action to fulfill your goal.
The Rule of 5 - Once you have your breakthrough goal:
Do 5 Things Everyday on Your Main Goal
Thank you so much for listening!
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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research
General
Media
ThriveGlobal - “Living life to the fullest” By David Stone
“A Q&A With Jack Canfield” By Adam Siddiq,
Article Directory on Positively Positive, Entrepreneur, and HuffPost
Medium/ThriveGlobal - “How Jack Canfield sold millions of books” by Ceyhun Yakup Özkardes-Cheung
Profile and Article Directory on The Teen Mentor
Sources of Insight - “Great Lessons from Jack Canfield” By JD Meier (Interesting Listicle from 2008)
[Podcast] Michelle Sorro - Jack Canfield | Meeting a Mentor (May 2019)
[Podcast] Danielle Lim The Art of Living and Science of Life - Jack Canfield: The Success Principles
[Podcast] Melissa Ambrosini - 23: How To Succeed At Life With Jack Canfield
[Podcast] Lewis Howes - EP. 143: THE 10 SUCCESS PRINCIPLES TO CREATE AN ABUNDANT LIFE WITH JACK CANFIELD
Videos
Jack’s YouTube Channel
InsightJunky - "99% is Hard, 100% is Easy..." | The Success Principles by Jack Canfield
Evan Carmichael - Jack Canfield's Top 10 Rules For Success (@JackCanfield)
Bestbookbits - Jack Canfield: The Success Principles Book Summary
Entrepreneur - Why Jack Canfield's 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' Series Was Originally Rejected
Chris Jarvis - My Interview with Jack Canfield
Belt & Suspenders CRE Investing Show - Jack Canfield Interviews Brian Hennessey
Lewis Howes - Jack Canfield and The 10 Success Principles to Create an Abundant Life with Lewis Howes
Books
The Success Principles Workbook: An Action Plan for Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield , Brandon Hall , and Janet Switzer
The Success Principles Workbook
The Success Principles - Book Summary
Audible - Jack’s Audiobook directory
Amazon Author Page - Jack Canfield
Misc
[Website] EFT Universe
[Book] The Billion Dollar Secret: 20 Principles of Billionaire Wealth and Success by Rafael Badziag and foreword by Jack Canfield
[SoS Episode] Grant Cardone: Why Most People Aren’t Willing To Succeed
[SoS Episode] Four Questions That Will Change Your World - An Exploration of “The Work” with Byron Katie
[Sos Episode] Your Secret Weapon to Becoming Fearless with Jia Jiang
Episode Transcript
[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.
[0:00:11.8] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than five million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.
How do you stop being a victim, take responsibility and make your life the life you wanted to be? In this episode, we uncover the universal principles of success with one of the world's top success experts, Jack Canfield.
Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How To Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word smarter, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.
In our previous episode with former FBI agent, Robin Dreeke, we heard some incredible stories straight out of a spy novel and then went deep into the 6-step system that Robin has outlined to predict people's future behavior, understand what motivates them and decode human behavior.
Now for our interview with Jack.
Jack Canfield, known as America's number one success coach is the co-author of more than 200 books, including The Success Principles, How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, The Success Principles Workbook and The Chicken Soup for the Soul series, which includes 40 New York Times bestsellers, having sold more than 500 million copies in 47 languages around the world. He holds two Guinness World Record titles and is a member of the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame.
Jack, welcome to the Science of Success.
[0:02:10.5] JC: Hey. Thanks for having me, Matt. I'm glad to be here.
[0:02:12.6] MB: Well, we're so excited to have you on the show today. Obviously, you're a legendary figure in the personal development self-help world and we can't wait to explore some of the themes and ideas from your new book.
[0:02:23.3] JC: Glad to do that. Excited.
[0:02:25.0] MB: I'd love to hear from your perspective, what inspired you to create The Success Principles workbook. Given how much time you spend on this journey and how deep you are into the space, what felt right about right now to really bring this to life?
[0:02:40.6] JC: Well, let me back a little bit and answer another question first, why did I write the first success principles book, which was I realized I was very, very successful. My 11-year-old son said, “Why do we live in a bigger house than everyone else?” I said, “Well, we have more money.” He said, “Why?” Because he knew I grew up poor in West Virginia. I said, “Well, because I've been living my life by a certain set of principles.” He wanted to know what they were, so we talked about them.
That afternoon I thought, “Gee, I should write a book how these people write books to their kids and say, here's what I want you to know.” I started to write The Success Principles. Then I realized, I wonder if these principles and activities and strategies I've used are only idiosyncratic to me, if they're really universal. I interviewed 75 of the most successful people in North America, people, generals in the military, movie stars, people like Steve Jobs at Apple, CEOs of companies, top sales people, top podcasters, whoever it was.
Basically, I found that these universal principles were universal, that the people that were super successful were all doing similar things. I said, “Well, this is great. I'm going to do the book.” I did that book and it sold millions and millions of copies all around the world. I think now, it's up to 47 languages.
One day I'm sitting there and I'm realizing, all the people that take my life seminars or that go through our coaching program were performing really, really well. I've met some people who'd read the book and weren't doing as well. I thought, “Well, the book is great if you do it,” because I got one guy over in the Philippines when I was in Manila, I was at a book signing. He came up to interview me after the book signing and he was homeless, literally was couchsurfing on all of his friends couches. I said, “It's a great interview, so why don't you come and be my guest tomorrow at my seminar?”
He came to my seminar. I gave him a copy of the book and I came back to Manila three years later and he walks in and a he's got a blue blazer on with a big gold medallion on the pocket, he's got about nine or 10 guys and gals behind him with polo shirts all with the same medallion. I recognized him. I said, “Are you John Kaleb?” He says, “Yeah.” I said, “You look different than the last time I was here.” He said, “I am.” He said, “I'm now the number one motivational speaker in the Philippines. I'm a multi-millionaire. I have three exotic cars.” He was wearing two gold Rolexes, one on each arm. Gold Doc Martens shoes. I mean, he was really doing it with the bling.
I said, “So what happened?” He said, “I read your book. I did every single thing in it.” I said, “I don't know anyone who's done every single thing in my book, because there's 64 principals at that time.” He said, “Well, I did.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Well, because here you were, you're living a life, you're happy, you're a multi-millionaire, you got a beautiful wife, your kids are all doing well, you travel all over the world, you're making a big difference. I wanted to do that.” I said, “Well, if it works for him, maybe it'll work for me, so I did everything you said and sure enough, here I am.” I said, “Great.”
Now that's not the norm that people would do that, but he did. What I realized was something more was needed. I said, let's put all the things that are in our coaching programs and in our live seminars, the activities, the worksheets, the exercises, etc., and let's put them between the covers of a book. I worked for a year and a half with two of my colleagues and we wrote this workbook. Then I said, “Well, let's test it with somebody who doesn't know these principles. They've never gone through the course. They'd not read the other book.”
We found about 60 people who had not done that. We gave them the book and we said, “We just want you to use this book. Go through it.” Gave them about three months to do it. At the end of it, people had doubled their income, people had lost weight, they had improved relationships, they got out of relationships, they left crappy jobs, they started to do things they'd put off for years, like start their own webinars, or write a book. That's how the book came to be and I'm really excited about it as we talk. This first two days on Amazon sold out, then they were actually – I think we printed 20,000 copies on the first run. They've now just come back to print for another 5,000. I'm excited. It's really taking off.
[0:06:32.4] MB: That is awesome and that story is so compelling. The journey that really started this podcast was about answering the same question, which is what are the universal principles of success and how can we interview experts and find those answers? That's a personal passion of mine for years and years and years, has been really trying to study people who are extremely successful and figure out what can I learn from them, what can I copy and what can I emulate and apply to my own life.
[0:06:59.7] JC: It's true. What is exciting is they are universal. I just wrote a foreword to a book that just came out. It was called The Billionaire’s Secret, written by a guy named Rafael Badziag, published over in Europe. He went around the world, took him I think three and a half years to achieve just getting to 21 billionaires. It's not easy to get to these guys if you're not somebody and he wasn't. He interviewed them. Most of them gave him the better part of a day to interview him.
Three of the things they found that I was not surprised, but a little bit surprised was that of the 21 people, all 21 and they ranged in age from 35 to 81, all 35 of them, yeah, 21 of them rather, got up at somewhere between 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning, so they’re really early starters. Guys like Hal Elrod, write books like Miracle Morning, what can you get done by 8:30 a.m. You need to meditate and exercise and all that. They got up early. They all meditated. Every single one of these people was a meditator and every single one of them exercised every morning for a minimum of a half an hour, some people for an hour. Even if they had to get up and get into their private jet at 5:30 in the morning to get somewhere, they would get up at 3:30, exercise for an hour before they went out to the hangar and got in their jet.
I thought that was really fascinating that it showed up. It just keeps showing up in all the books where people interview massive numbers of people. You look at when Tim Ferriss did his books and he started interviewing people, the titans – I forget the exact title of the book. You probably remember it.
The reality was similar things. There are principles that if you apply them, they work. I know, Michael Beckwith has this wonderful what he calls the four stages of consciousness, where the first stage is you're a victim. You think the world is doing it to you. You're saying, “Why God? What did I do? Why do I deserve to be sick or whatever?” The second stage he calls the manipulator stage, which is where you realize there are laws of the universe. If you use those laws, you can manipulate the universe to your advantage. You can get what you want. You can become prosperous, healthy, wealthy, impactful, making a difference, be significant, etc.
Then the third stage is you realize well, if there's all these universal laws, who's making these laws? Is there some force behind this? We can call it God, infinite intelligence, source, energy, universal wisdom, whatever. He began to go, “Well, maybe I should be paying attention to its guidance.” That's when we start to go inside. Christians would say, not my will, but I will. People in the New Age would say, following my energy. A lot of people would say, following my intuition, tuning into my higher self, etc.
Then the final stage is where you realize, “Hey, maybe there is this universal force and I'm part of it.” Just like, one drop of water is not the entire ocean, but it is ocean. The reality is that we all can transform and move up through these stages. As we go into higher consciousness, we still use the universal laws to manifest that which we're being guided to do. Unfortunately, Matt as you know, our schools do not teach this stuff. We should all be graduating with classes called education of the self, or how to be prosperous.
Think about kids go to college, they study all the stuff, sociology and science and math and philosophy and history and nobody's teaching courses on how to be successful. You get all these kids coming out of college with this massive college debt, not really knowing how to really get rid of it quickly. It's really unfortunate, but I think that's got to change.
[0:10:17.3] MB: Yeah. I mean, that was one of the other major reasons that I started this podcast is because I wanted to learn and I wanted to share with other people what are all the things that they don't teach you in school that are critical to success, things like emotional intelligence, communication skills, how to negotiate, how to manage yourself, how to motivate yourself, self-awareness, all of these different elements and yet, none of that stuff.
It may be in some esoteric psychology class, you'll hear the theory about it, but none of that stuff is taught in a way that's actually applicable and applies to achieving your goals and building the life that you ultimately want to live.
[0:10:51.3] JC: Absolutely. Absolutely. I always say, no one ever got divorced because they didn't memorize the five causes of a civil war, or the three exports of Argentina, which is stuff that a lot of us had learned in school that you don't use very much. We all need communication skills. We need values clarification. We need to learn how to manage our emotional states, how to meditate, how to negotiate, how to ask for what we want, how to deal with rejection. Thank God for TED Talks and for YouTube and for all the people that go out into the hotel rooms and put on seminars and people like you who are bringing people on for the podcast, we're getting this education.
I used to say if it happens on time, it's called education. If it happens late, it's called therapy. A lot of us pay a lot of money to heal the things we never should have gotten in trouble in the first place if we've been adequately taught in school.
I remember being in Fairfield, Iowa. I got an award from the university – what was called Maharishi University. That's where they teach TM on in Fairfield. I'd never been there before and I went there. They have a school, it's a K through high school, that all the people that are in the TM movement send their kids there to. I went and visited the school. It was so cool, because early in the morning right when school started, all these kids, a hundreds of them at all different ages, sit for 20 minutes of meditation. I was shocked. You see the little kids that are like kindergarteners and first grade sitting with their legs crossed with their hands folded in their lap and they’re just sitting there with smiles on their faces peacefully.
Then I saw the impact of it. I was watching as they were passing from one class to another during changing of the periods and this one boy came up and started teasing this girl. The girl just looked at him and said, “Joe, I know you're just trying to have fun and I know you do you really got a good sense of humor, but I'm in a really bad mood today. I've really had some difficult things to deal with, so I'd really appreciate it if you didn't tease me today.” He said, “Oh, I'm so sorry, Andrea.” He walked away.
Now that would not happen in 99% of public schools, because they wouldn't have the skills to have had that conversation and the consciousness to even entertain it. I know it's possible. I think, there are a number of people that are teaching this stuff. I've now trained 3,500 teachers to teach this work in the public schools and another 3,500 trainers around the world teaching it in public seminars. We're slowly shifting this one teacher at a time who teaches other teachers. It's like a giant chain letter. Eventually, it'll get out there and reach everybody.
[0:13:12.4] MB: It's funny that conversation probably couldn't even happen between most adults in America today.
[0:13:19.8] JC: You're right.
[0:13:20.6] MB: It's because as you touched on earlier, so many people are still stuck in that first phase, that phase of victimhood.
[0:13:28.1] JC: Yes. Yes. It's interesting. The first chapter in both of my books, The Success Principles and The Success Principles Workbook, it says take a 100% responsibility for your life and your results. I teach this formula in that chapter called E plus R equals O. There's an event, you have a response to that event and that creates an outcome. Everything you're currently experiencing now is an outcome of how you responded to an earlier event.
Someone gives you a $2,000 bonus, you go to Vegas, you spend it, you have a good time. A year later, you don't have any increased net worth. Someone else invested. They have increased net worth. Your wife forgets your birthday and you feel really bummed out and you feel angry, you feel sad, or you feel unloved, or your wife forgets your birthday and you go, “Gee, someone who loves me forgot my birthday.” As opposed to thinking, “My wife doesn't love me, because she forgot my birthday.”
You begin to learn that your responses to the event, it's not the event that determines who you are. A lot of people got rich during the recession that started in 2009. A lot of people will make more money during the coronavirus pandemic than they were making before. I have friends who are personal development teachers who are up 40% during the month of March and April over where they were last year, because of what they're doing. They're bundling products together, they're doing free seminars for people, which are building their brand and therefore, people are feeling cared about.
Then like Gary Vaynerchuk, teaches this jab, jab, right hook rather. What happens is you give, you give and then you can sell something. They got immediately into relationship with people. I have a person I know who runs a gym. It's a fitness center. What happens is the coronavirus pandemic comes along, everybody gets locked down, they're not allowed to go out, so nobody can come to his fitness center. He could sit at home and say, “Life is unfair. Why is God doing this to me? I just have invested all this money and all this new equipment and all these trainers.”
What he did do instead was he meditated. During his meditation, he had an insight which was what resources do I still have? I still got all this equipment. People are at home, they were coming in to use the equipment, why don't I rent the equipment to them? I'll sanitize everything with an inch of his life. I'll call up all my clients and I'll say, “I could deliver a treadmill, or a spin bicycle, or an elliptical trainer, or some weights, or whatever it is that you want to your house. You just pay for the rental.”
Now he doesn't get cancellations of his gym memberships. He charges a little more for the rental and the delivery. He sets everything up for them and he's making more money now than he was making before the pandemic started.
A restaurant owner who used to be doing 40 meals a night is now doing 60 meals a night, because the immediately bought a 1,000 takeout boxes, called all his clients and said, “We're going to have a menu. There's going to be three items every night, a salad or soup, a main course and a dessert. There'll be vegetables on the side with the main course. I'll do wine pairings if you want. There's no substitutions. You can either pick it up at 6:00, 6:30, 7:00 or 7:30. You come by, call out on your cellphone you're here, we'll come running out and give it to you.” He's making more money, has less staff problems, because of social distance in his kitchen and he's still able to use a couple of his waiters for runners and everybody's winning.
The idea is it's not the event, it's how you respond to it. You're not a victim. You're never a victim. As Napoleon Hill taught us, in every adversity or heartache, there's a seed of an equal or greater benefit. You have to look for it. If you first start to believe that's true and if you believe it's true, then you look for it. Again, if you look for it, you're going to find it. Then once you find it, you have to put it into action.
A lot of people are doing very well. A lot of people are shifting how they do their businesses. A lot of people are realizing, “Hey, this is a time I can engage in personal development. I've always told myself I don't have time to meditate. I don't have time to exercise.” Well, you do now because you're not doing your commute to work every morning. You do have that time.
[0:17:12.9] MB: Such a great insight. My own response to this whole pandemic has been the same thing. I've been working out every day, taking better care of myself, working harder than I ever have. I want to come out of this stronger in every way than when I went into it.
[0:17:26.2] JC: There's no reason you shouldn't. I mean, we all have time now to exercise. I'm actually taking more of my supplements than I've ever taken. I do take a lot, that's why I look as young as I do as old as I am. I went online, learned about antivirals, what herbs, what essential oils should I be taking, what vitamins should I be upping my doses of, etc. I'm learning more about just being healthy in general, keeping my immune system high.
We know for example, that when you meditate, it raises your vibration. When your vibration is high, meaning you're in a state of love, joy, gratitude, compassion, your body is actually has stronger immune system. When you're in fear, your energy goes to your arms and your legs, because fear usually meant in the old days that you had to run away from something, or fight it, or you'd be killed. Now we get afraid of things like losing our apartment, losing our job, our mortgage, not being able to be paid, etc. We can't run from that and we can't fight it, so we're just in stress. When we’re in stress, our immune system goes down, because when you were running from a tiger, it didn't matter if you were fighting off virus or bacteria. If you didn't get away from the tiger, your body was going to be eaten.
Your body was smart enough to say, “Let's handle that later.” You want your immune system be high. Basically when you're in a relaxed state, your immune system has a chance to focus, as opposed to being put into shutdown when you're in fear.
There's a wonderful – I recommend this to everybody. You go to EFT Universe. EFT stands for Emotional, Freedom Technique. That's the tapping technique, I'm sure you know about. Dawson Church has this thing called eco-meditation, E-C-O like in the ecology, eco-meditation. He does about a 10-minute talk on the whole thing about immune systems. One of the things we now know is this meditation he teaches, which is about a 20-minute meditation and you simply hit the button and it starts and you listen to it and you visualize when you're supposed to and there's some tapping, you tap along, there's some breathing exercises. He's combined all these three things together. What they did was research before the pandemic started, where they had people in a workshop who if they did this every day for seven days in a row, the immunoglobins, which are immune-factors have fight off viruses and bacteria in your saliva increases by a 113%.
Now we know that the coronavirus, in order to get into your lungs has to come through your mouth, or your nose. What happens is if you're breathing in, whatever you breathe in has to go through your throat, which is where saliva is also lining your throat, so you have a much better chance of killing off that virus before it ever gets into your lungs. There's things like that we can do that are responses to this event called the coronavirus pandemic, that if we're conscious and we're not hijacked into our amygdala, which is where the fear lives in the back of your brain, then we're in our prefrontal cortex, which is rational thought, creative thoughts. We can be rational, do the things, do the research we need to do, buy the products online that we need to buy and then take the vitamins, do the exercises, etc.
It's also where your creative mind comes from. To be creative, to actually find ways to be of service, to find ways to stay healthier, to exercise like you're doing, to go online. For instance, I think there's a thing called past class, which you could go through the app. You can get for free and there's 4,000 free classes that are being delivered on the Internet right now, everything from spin classes, to Pilates, to yoga, to Tony Horton stuff, whatever.
The reality is there's a lot of stuff to do if you're not in fear. As you're saying, you can get healthy, you can get fitter, you can work on yourself, whether you work through my success principles workbook, or you work through other things you've always wanted to work through you've never done. Learn to meditate, practice something you're good at.
One of the things I've been teaching, Matt, is called the 5 M’s, which is meditate, mindfulness, which means every hour, set your smartphone to go off every hour, so that you stop, scan your body, ask yourself, “Am I thirsty? Do I need to stretch? Am I in fear? Is my body too tight? Do I need to move?” Get up and move around if you need to. Do a yoga posture, do some breathing exercises, take a quick walk, whatever you need to do and then come back. Mindfulness and meditation are two of the Ms.
Then movement; anytime you're moving, first of all, you're raising your body heat, heat kills off viruses, that's why our body gives us a fever. Also, if you can get into a sauna, or a steam bath, or just get into a really hot bath, or a really hot shower, that's a good thing to do. It raises your body temperature up. Then movement, dancing – if you love to dance, put on some dance music. There’s all kind of – have these coronavirus playlists, those positive lyrics to keep you high. Also, you can dance your heart off.
Friends of mine just did a dance party, where they hired a DJ. They did a Zoom meeting and they had about 31 people all with their computers in front of them standing in front of computers dancing. You could see all 31 people in their little squares on the thing. Plus, a professional DJ playing music. Some were drinking wine, some tequila, some not drinking at all, whatever, but they had a really great time. That's another thing you can do.
The next thing is called mastery. Anything you're good at, you're going to stay in the present moment, not be in the future in fear and it's going to raise your vibration. If you love to play the guitar, play the guitar. If you love to play piano, if you love to do puzzles, if you love to listen to TED Talks, whatever it might be, do the things that you're good at, that you love that raise your energy.
Also if you're getting better at something, so if you're taking a guitar lesson. I study guitar online. There's all these classes, most of them are free. You could online and learn new chords, new riffs, new song patterns, whatever. I do that every day. It's totally fun. Then the last M is meaningful communication, which is stay connected to people and be honest and open. There's not a time to try to impress people about how cool you are, how successful you are, how unafraid you are, etc. Just be honest and open, support each other, don't self-isolate.
[0:23:19.1] AF: What's up, everybody? This is Austin Fable, producer and co-host of the Science of Success. This episode of the Science of Success is brought to you by the mobile app Best Fiends. That's best friends, but without the R.
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[0:25:00.7] MB: Great strategies and whether or not we're in the midst of a pandemic, I mean, every one of those with things that are easy to implement make such a huge difference in your life. I want to come back to this idea of taking responsibility, because to me, that is one of the most fundamental shifts that can really impact whether or not someone is ultimately successful. For somebody who's stuck in a victim mindset, how do you get out of that? How do you start that first step of taking responsibility?
[0:25:30.4] JC: Well, you first have to look at is your life what you want it to be? If it's not what you want it to be, what I often say to people in my seminars is how's that working for you? All these things you're doing, you're blaming your mother, you're complaining about your boss, you're making excuses, doing things that are not taking numbers and responsibility. The fact is people are not happy.
If you have everything you want right now, you can probably turn off the podcast and go do something you love to do. If for something you want you don't have called more money, more clients, more coaching clients, more customers, more impact, better health, more fun time, more recreational time, whatever it might be that you don't have, then these principles work and you've got to get out of victim.
Basically, the first thing to do is to look at who are you blaming. We blame the government. Look at our government right now. You've got the country blaming Trump for not starting soon enough with the testing. You've got Trump blaming Obama. You've got Trump blaming other people. You've got the congress blaming the president, the president blaming the congress, the media blaming the president, the president blaming the media. It's a useless waste of time, because if you go to E plus R equals O, that response of blaming is not producing a better outcome.
I had a woman in a seminar, I was just doing an evening workshop for a group. This woman came up on the break and she said, “You know, you said you shouldn't be spending your time being resentful to people.” I said, “Well, yeah. It's a waste of time. It's not getting you what you want.” Then she said, “Well, I'm really pissed at my father.” I said, “Why?” “Well, he died a few years ago and he left twice as much money to my sister as he left to me. It's not right. It's not fair.” She said, “Three years ago.” I said, “Yeah, and you're still upset about it?” “Yeah.”
I said, “Is that making you miserable every day?” She said, “Not a day goes by I don't think about it.” “When you think about it, how do you feel?” “I feel terrible.” “Do you like feeling terrible?” “No.” “Does feeling terrible and being upset getting you more money?” “No.” “Has your sister offered you more money?” “No.” “Do you think she's ever going to give it to you?” “No.” “How is this serving you? What's it doing for you? What's the payoff?” The payoff is you get to be right, but you don't get to be happy. What are you pretending not to know? That it’s not going to change. For this to change, you have to change.
Again, look at it. Stop resenting your sister. Stop resenting your father. Byron Katie teaches this wonderful process of she has these four questions. Is it true that your father should have left you more money? Well, you'd like to say yes. Can you absolutely know it's true? Well, you don't know. Maybe there's a higher purpose here. Maybe your father was trying to teach yourself resourcefulness. Maybe he was trying to teach you how negative your resentment is and how it hurts you. Maybe there's some other higher purpose you haven't seen yet. Maybe you would have taken that money and bought drugs and killed yourself. Who the hell knows?
The point being that you can't know for sure that this wasn't the way it should have been. Then question is who are you when you think that thought? Well, you're miserable, you're angry, you're mad at your father, you're mad at your sister, you're not speaking to her, she told me. Who would you be without that thought? “Well, I'd be a loving person. I'd be happy. I'd be talking to my sister and we'd be having a great relationship.”
Basically, to really get that, it's not serving me to be a victim. It's just keeping me stuck and I'm going to stay stuck as long as I keep doing what I've been doing. You can go through in our workbook, we have a set of exercises, like who do you blame for what? Do you blame your boss? Do you blame the traffic for making you late? Do you blame the weather for your moods? Do you blame your spouse for why you're miserable, or your neighbors for why you’re not happy? We can do down the list. Wall Street for the recession, then you lost your home or whatever. Now, I love this quote from God, 10X. What's his name?
[0:29:08.8] MB: Grant Cardone?
[0:29:09.7] JC: Grant Cardone. It just came to me the same time. Grant Cardone. I heard him give a talk once. I loved it. He said, “How many of you think prices are too high right now?” Half the group raises hand. He said, “You think a steak cost too much? You go out, the wine is too expensive. You go to the store, the good stuff cost too much.” He said, “Is that getting you anywhere?” No. He said, “The only thing that's going to get you what you want is to make more money, so you can pay the higher prices. Let's study how to do that.” It just makes so much more sense when you think about it.
The other thing you have to give up besides blaming is complaining. Now complaining is very interesting. Complaining means that I have a reference of something I prefer that's better than what I have. I couldn't complain about gravity. No one complains about gravity, think about that. You never hear an older person with a walker walking through the hospital or the mall going, “I hate gravity. Gravity sucks. It wasn't for gravity, I wouldn't be all bent over like this.” You never hear anyone say that. Why? Because gravity, there's no options if you live on earth, unless you're an astronaut.
We don't complain about things we can't change. People complain about the weather, because they know there's better weather somewhere and they're not willing to move to go experience that better weather, or get on a plane and least go for a vacation and a better weather. We complain about our spouses, because we know somewhere in our fantasy, there's another woman or man who's better.
For example, I remember a long time ago when I was first learning about this, I'm a big Super Bowl NFL football fan. Watching the Super Bowl and my wife comes in and she goes, “I can't believe you're sitting here watching this game, eating Cheetos, drinking a beer and you're getting fat and they're all out there, they're making a lot of money and they're healthy and why don't you go to the gym and workout and watch it?” I'm thinking, “Man, I'm complaining about my wife.” I come to work on Monday morning. I see Matt and I go, “Matt, you wouldn't believe my wife. She's the food Nazi. She's a real pain in the butt.”
Now in order for me to do that, I have to know, or pretend that somewhere in the universe there's another woman that would go, “Honey, would you like some more nachos? Can I get you another beer?” Now there are women who do that. Knowing that, I can complain about my wife. Here's the problem, complaining about her is not going to get me what I want. Either I have to have a negotiation with my wife just called, “Let me alone. This is my body. I'll do what I want.” Or I need to go to therapy and work on our relationship, or I need to stop drinking beer and eating Cheetos, which is probably a good thing, or I need to get out of the relationship and go find a woman who's going to deliver the nachos and a beer without a fight. All three of those things require me to take a risk, require me to do something different, to step out of my normal comfort zone. I'd rather complain about it than do the thing that would get me what I want.
Well, there's an exercise in the book. It says, what are the things you complain about, what would you rather have? How could you get it? When will you take the action to do that? You begin to look at, okay, if I want to get out of being a victim, these are things I have to do.
Then a third one is excuse making. We all make excuses after the fact, why we didn't get the report done on time, why we're late to work. If you were to take one of my live seminars, which I hope someday we'll be able to do again, on the front of the stage would be two fishbowls on either side of the stage. If anyone in the group complained, blamed or made an excuse about why they were late, or why their phone went off, because we have a rule you if your phone goes off in the training, it's a $20 fine on the spot. You start to make an excuse about it, it's another $2 fine.
We're not trying to punish people, but make them aware that there is a cost when you play the victim game. These are some of the ways you can begin to do it. In our house and in my company, if someone makes an excuse, blame somebody, or complains about something, my staff or my family would have to put $2 dollars in a jar. Again, it all goes to charity. We're not trying to punish them, but make them aware that there's a cost to you much bigger than the $2.
[0:32:45.1] MB: Such great exercises and really practical, applicable ways. I love the question, coming back to blame is just asking yourself who are you blaming for what in your life. I mean, all three of those things; blame, excuses and complaining are so dangerous and so insidious. It can really easily sabotage any attempt to be successful at anything you want in life.
[0:33:07.6] JC: You know what's interesting too, is that you could give me any situation that some people blame for their failure. The fact that their parents were alcoholics, that their husband was abusive, that they were born black, lesbian, female in Alabama, which I wouldn't wish on anybody. I have a gay son, so it's not about the gay part, but about just prejudice they would face in that situation.
The reality is that there's somebody who was born that same situation who did well. You take two twins. One becomes a successful person, the other becomes a drug addict and they both were the same DNA, grew up in the same household, went to the same schools, etc., but one made a different set of choices based on their response to the world they were in. One did well, one did not. We can see that there's lots of twin studies out there that you can do research on.
I think that I've had people embezzle money from me. I've had people do wrongful lawsuits that we just settled rather than go to court, because it was cheaper, but we weren't guilty. I could complain about a lot of stuff along the way. People plagiarizing my work, people stealing our copyrights.
In Iran for instance, someone published about 20 Chicken Soup for the Soul books and never paid us royalties, because Ron doesn't honor international copyright law. I've spoke in Iran about three years ago. I went over there and spoke in Tehran. I had to go through the Pakistani embassy just to get a Visa, since we consider them an enemy. Anyway, it was cool. This guy comes up to me and he hands me $10,000 dollars in crisp $100 US bills. I said, “What's this for?”
He said, “Well, we've been pirating your books for the last 10 years. I just started to feel guilty about it. Here's a little bit of royalty money anyway.” It's cool. The idea is all these things can happen to you. It’s just what is. So what? Get on with your life.
[0:34:49.7] MB: That's a really funny anecdote. Something you said a minute ago too really resonated with me, which is this idea that doing the thing that ultimately gets you what you want requires you to take risk. So often, that risk part is really what can end up paralyzing you, or making you scared, or preventing you from really ultimately taking action.
[0:35:13.5] JC: Well, one of the – another formula I talk about is awareness plus risk equals success. In other words, you cannot get change if you keep doing the same thing you've been doing. Everyone listening to this right now, just fold your hands and with your hands folded, notice which thumb is on top. It’s either your left or your right. Now I want you to unfold your hands and move all your fingers up a notch, so that the other thumb ends up on top. Don't just move your thumbs, but move all the fingers so the other thumb ends up naturally on top and notice that feels.
Now when I do that with audiences I'll ask, how many of you noticed that that feels uncomfortable, awkward, or strange, or weird? Almost everyone raises their hand. I'll say, what do you want to do? They'll say, “I want to go back to the other way, because it's so uncomfortable,” so they go back to the other way. You can do that now. Unfold your hands, put it back to the original position. Most people go, “Ah.” It's a sigh of relief.
This is why most people are not successful. They'd rather be comfortable than do what's necessary, because all new behavior, just neurologically the way the brain is wired, is going to be uncomfortable. Just as simple as changing our way we folded our hands felt awkward or uncomfortable. Here's the cool part and you can do this today if you want. Fold your hands in the wrong way, maybe while you're watching a TV show or something and notice that after a few minutes, it doesn't feel weird or awkward or uncomfortable anymore. Your body adjusts, just like we all learn to drive a car. It was awkward at first, especially if you were learning with a stick shift. Now we can do it. Any respectable person can drive with one hand on the steering wheel, break up a fight with the kids in the backseat with the other hand, or have a Big Mac in your right hand, or whatever it is you eat when you're in your car.
The reality is it's just a matter of being willing to be uncomfortable a little bit, so that you get to where you want to go. You first have to fight off the discomfort concept. The second part is the fact that there is a potential risk of loss; loss of time, loss of invested money, loss of face, if you don't succeed, loss of self-esteem if you judge yourself by your successes, which you shouldn't, but many people. The fact is I teach this idea about asking for what you want. A lot of people are afraid to ask.
To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to be willing to ask and you have to be willing to ask big. Most people don't know this, but Howard Schultz who started Starbucks was turned down by 217 banks for investments before he was able to get an investor to invest enough money that he could open his first Starbucks store. Think about this, if he'd given up or he was afraid to ask, or afraid of rejection, he’d given up after 200, we wouldn't be all knowing who Starbucks is and most of us getting our coffee there when we go out in the world.
The reality is that you've got to be willing to take some risk. The fact is most risks are not nearly as big as you think they are. If I ask someone out to dinner and they say no, I didn't have anyone to eat dinner with before I asked them, I don't have anyone to eat dinner with after I asked them. If I asked, my life didn’t get worse. If I asked someone to invest in my company and they say no, I still don't have any money, but I didn't get worse.
I was working at a company called Solar Optical company as I came in to do a keynote speech for their sales team and 300 people in the audience. I asked them if they knew who the top four salespeople were. I'd heard that these top four were outperforming everyone by a 100%, 200%, 300%, 400%. They all said, yeah. I said, “Yell out their names.” Same names came out.
I said, “How many of you ever gone up to them and asked them what is it that you're doing that I could learn to do, so I could be more successful?” Not one hand went up. Then I said, “Why don't you ask them?” Then they yelled out, “Fear of rejection. They might say no.” I said, “We already have a no. How could it get worse? It can’t.” Basically, we have to be willing to take risks. As Tony Robbins says, massive action produces massive results. The bigger risk you're willing to take, you don't want to take a risk that's going to take you out. Meaning, risk should be rational. You don't want to risk all your money. You don't want to risk your entire company, your house, that thing.
If you look, I was watching one of these celebrity chefs being interviewed. I was in Singapore watching CNN just to hear some English. They were interviewing one of these master chefs. I can't think of his name right now, but doesn't matter. He was saying, “In order to build my first restaurant, I had to sell my first house.” Now that's a huge risk, if your restaurant doesn't work. He was willing to take that risk and now he has refreshments all around the world, several of which I've eaten and I just can't remember his name right now.
He also had his own TV show. You got to take risks in order to go to the next level. Invest money, whether it's in your own company, the stock market, a friend's business, whatever it might be. You have to risk. The first time I ran a training, I put the wrong exercise at the very end on a Sunday afternoon and just got people way too emotionally stimulated and half the people left raw. I realized, better do that on Saturday. I never would have known that if I hadn't done the workshop. You just have to put something out there.
Microsoft, if we waited till Microsoft programs were perfect, there’d be no Microsoft programs. That's why when we're working on our word processor or whatever, we're processing, typing in word documents, sometimes it'll crash and they’ll say, “Should we send this error to Microsoft?” Well, they expect that to happen, because the programming is going to have bugs in it. We have to be willing to make mistakes in order to learn. It's okay. Think about how many times you fell down before you learned to walk. If your parents had given up after – you got 200 times to fall down. After that, you're on your own. Most of us never were to learn to walk.
Give yourself permission to fail and know that failure is part of the process. You've probably heard people say, “Fail faster. The faster we fail, the faster we learn, the faster we're going to get to where we go.”
[0:40:56.5] MB: So many nuggets of wisdom in there.
[0:41:02.5] AF: This episode of the Science of Success is brought to you once again by our incredible sponsors at Brilliant. Go to www.brilliant.org/scienceofsuccess to learn more. For a limited time, the first 200 of our listeners to sign up get 20% off an annual premium subscription. Brilliant is a math and science learning platform and their mission is to inspire and develop people to achieve their goals in STEM learning. I love it.
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[0:42:29.6] MB: One of my favorite things that you've just shared is this, it's such a simple idea but it's really powerful, which is if you don't ask, or if you never ask, then you already are guaranteed to get a no. In almost every case, maybe borrowing a little bit of embarrassment, or fear of rejection, there's really only upside to asking.
[0:42:48.8] JC: Absolutely. One of the exercises I do in my live training is called the nine nos exercise. I tell people, “How many of you are afraid of rejection?” About half the hands go up. I say, “We're going to do an exercise to get you over that.” I said, what you're going to do is think of three things you could ask for that would help you achieve your breakthrough goal. A little background, one of the things I have in the book, The Success Principles Workbook, is to create a breakthrough goal. What would be a goal that if you achieved it in the next year, so it's a one-year goal, it would quantum leap you in terms of the success of your life, your profession, or your company? For most people, it's something like, write a book, double my income, get Uber as a client, have my own radio show.
I had a chiropractor who had his own radio show now in Texas after he took this exercise in a seminar I did. He got a five-minute radio show during drive time where he would talk about subluxations, he would talk about nutrition, he would talk about meditation, herbs, vitamins, all this stuff. Every morning somewhere between 7 and 9, he would have this little five-minute show. Pretty soon, all these people started coming to him and calling him and wanting him to be their chiropractor.
In two years, he now opened four satellite offices. He goes to each office one day of the week Monday through Friday, hired other chiropractors coming out of Parker chiropractic school down in Texas and now he's making a multi-million dollar a year income. Whereas before, he was making maybe about $80,000 a year. That one little breakthrough goal of having his five-minute radio show and local, the radio totally quantum leaped him. What would be something that would quantum leap you?
Now once you have that goal, we said for the nine nos exercise, what are three things you could ask for, think of three people you could ask practical. Will you babysit my kid every Saturday afternoon, so I could write my book? Will you lend me a $1,000, so I can go take this online marketing class? Whatever it might be. I said, here's what we’re going to do. We're going to mill around and you're going to go up to people and you're going to ask them for what you want and they're going to ask you for what they want. You're going to say no to them and they're going to say no to you. You're going to count how many times you say no to different people.
You come up Matt, you ask me. I say no. You ask me for something and I say no. I ask you, you say no. Now we separate, we go to someone else. You ask them for something, they ask you for something. You count how many times you give a no. The tenth person that asks you, you say yes. Now what happens is as we do this, people start getting yeses. By the end of the exercise, I let it go on for about 17 minutes. At the end of the exercise, almost everyone's got a yes. Some people have got five yeses. I say, what did we learn from this? People go, “Oh, it's simply a numbers game. The more people I ask, the more likely I can get a yes.” It's called the law of probabilities. The more people you ask, the more chances of getting a yes. The more books you read, the more likely one of them will change your life. The more seminars you go to, the more likely one of them will make you a millionaire, etc. The law of probabilities.
The other thing is they go, their no wasn't personal. They weren't able to give me a yes. I was taking it personal. They didn't like me. Well no, they weren't in a position to give a yes. That's true in the real world. The other thing some people realize is you can stand in front of one person and go, “Will you give me a million dollars?” No. “Will you give me a million dollars?” No. “Will you give me a million dollars?” No. “Will you give me a –” Kids know this. They ask their parents, “Mom, can I have a cookie?” No. “Mom, can I please have a cookie?” No. “Come on, mom. Give me a cookie. “No, you'll ruin your appetite.” “Mom, I promise I'll eat everything you put on my plate, even the broccoli.” No. “Mom, my blood sugar is low. I'm going to fall over and faint. You don't want a child fainting on the floor do you?” Eventually, even you go, “Here, have a darn cookie.”
You can go back to people, because for instance maybe you went to your brother a couple weeks ago and you asked him to join your multi-level marketing company, he says no. Now that he just lost his job because of the pandemic, he says yes. You never know what situation changes for people. I teach ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask. I coined a term, it's become part of the language, but about five years ago I said, we should all learn to become askholes, so you just ask, ask, ask, ask, ask.
[0:46:48.1] MB: That's so funny. I've got a two-year-old and she'll just sit at the kitchen counter and just say, “Cookie, cookie, cookie.” Just over and over. That's exactly the same thing.
[0:46:57.8] JC: Yeah. Yeah. I have a dog that does that.
[0:47:00.7] MB: That's right. Persistence, I mean, it makes a big difference. I mean, this whole discussion reminds me of one of my all-time favorite quotes, which I put a smile on my face to see. It was actually one of the chapter titles in the book was everything you want is on the other side of fear.
[0:47:17.5] JC: Yes. Yes, it's true. We're so afraid. As we said earlier, we're afraid of rejection, we're afraid of failure ,we're afraid of loss. Because so many people are afraid of success. What happens if I win the lottery? All my relatives are going to come out of the woodwork and they're going to want money from me and I don't good at saying no. Then people are going to owe me money and whatever it is, there's a fear. Some people are afraid if they have money, they'll become unspiritual. There's a lot of subconscious beliefs and fears that run us.
Tony Robbins has this quote, “If you can't, you must.” That's why he's always having people walk on fire and jump out of planes and things like that, because I remember the first time I did a fire walk, I was there and I got to the other end of it. That's not a very useful skill, unless you run a lot of barbecues. The thing for me was I got to the other end of the fire and I said, “What else have I told myself I can't do?” I must have made 40 scary phone calls the next week that I've been putting off, because I realized there's nothing to be afraid of. It's just our mind telling us that something bad is going to happen.
In the workbook, we have a whole chapter of how do you scare yourself? What are the negative outcomes you imagine? What are you telling yourself? See, one of the exercises, I scare myself by imagining. You think of a fear you have. “Well, I'm afraid to jump out of a plane. Well, I'd like to jump out of a plane. That would be really cool, great adrenaline rush, have that picture on my wall, prove I'm really cool from a success teacher. That's another merit badge on my sash thing. I scare myself by imagining that if I do, for some reason my chute won't open and I'll go splat and die. I'd really like to ask my boss for a raise and I scare myself by imagining that if I do, not only will he not give me a raise, he'll probably tell me what he's upset with and he might even fire me.”
People are doing this stuff to themselves all day long, but they’re unaware that they're doing. They're not conscious. Basically, you want to realize, “What am I doing?” Then I have a little mantra I teach people in my seminars. I have a lot of fun with it. I say, “I learned this mantra from a teacher in India and all this stuff.” I have people put their finger and their thumb together and I have them chant, “Oooh.” Then we had, “What the heck? Go for it anyway.” I'll have 400 people chanting that for the next minute or so. Everyone laughs, because it's funny.
Really what I want them to get is when you're feeling fear, just say to yourself, “Oh, what the heck. Go for it anyway.” The worst that can happen is usually nothing very bad. Obviously, think about how you're scaring yourself and then let it go and just do it. That's the main thing. I think Brian Tracy said, the only question people ever ask once they do the thing they're afraid of is why didn't I do this sooner? Why didn't I do this sooner? Because you realize you could have had that money, that person in your life as a relationship, that date that you wanted, that loan that you wanted, that podcast that you wanted to be on. Whatever it is, nine times out of 10, it works out really well. At times it doesn't, you learn something, so you can go back and do it again more intelligently.
[0:50:23.9] MB: One of the things you said at the very beginning of our conversation was that if you read books, great. But if you don't act on it and you don't implement it and execute on it, then it ultimately doesn't matter. That's why I think it's such a great idea to put together a workbook. I love all these exercises and these questions. I'm writing them all down. I'm going to use them all. I'm curious, what would be one out of all the things, or exercises we've talked about, which one would you recommend, if the audience wanted to start with one of these, which one would you say would be the most impactful place to start?
[0:50:57.5] JC: Well, let me give a context to that. I'll answer your question, but the context is if I asked you if you could only keep one organ in your body, which one would it be?
[0:51:04.5] MB: Fair enough.
[0:51:05.4] JC: You'd say, you can't do that, right? Your body will die. If you don't have your lungs and your heart and your kidney and your liver and your stomach and so forth. What I've done in the book is taken 17 of the core principles from the bigger book, which has 64 and said, these are the core. If you do this in order, it is like a combination lock. It's the right thing to do.
Like you said, it's not a book you read. It's a book you do. In fact, I wish I'd written in the first – I almost wish I'd renamed the book, Don't Read This Book, because I really don't want people to read the book. I want them to do the book. Literally, each exercise you do in the order that you do, takes you through this combination lock where you get to the end of it, you've actually transformed your life, you have a plan of action, you're doing things differently, you've overcome a lot of your fears, you're visualizing, you're affirming, you know what your breakthrough goal is, you're asking for feedback, which a lot of people don’t, because they're afraid of what they're going to hear, which is another big fear, etc.
With all that having been said, I would say that probably, it's the one you haven't done. If you haven't set goals, you've got to have goals for your life. You got to sit down and have specific, measurable goals. If you're not visualizing, you need to be visualizing every single day and doing it correctly. I would say, probably number seven which says, take action. That gets to where we talked about. It's not enough to know these things. You have to take action to fulfill your goal, to achieve your vision, to fulfill your purpose, etc.
I teach something in the book called the rule of five. Once you have your breakthrough goal or your goals in seven areas of your life, which we also take you through, the seven areas of health and fitness, relationships, finances, job and career, possessions you want to own, things you want to do, philanthropy, etc., then the idea of five things a day on your main goal. You pick what's the most important goal you have and you say, “If I were to do five things today that would move me toward that goal, what would they be?” You write that down. You don't go to bed until they're done.
Sometimes, I've been up till 2:00 in the morning to complete that list of five. Now normally, I don't because I plan more intelligently than I did when I first started. The idea is if you do five things a day, it'll be like going to the largest tree you've ever seen with an axe, a very sharp axe. If you took five cuts at that tree every day, eventually even the tallest redwood in the redwood forest would have to fall down.
If you take five actions a day, you're going to do 1,800 plus actions a year to achieve your goal. There's no goal that you can't achieve if you were to do that. The actions you take could be some of the things in the book that you haven't done yet, or they can be actions like making five sales calls.
When we did Chicken Soup for the Soul, we took five actions every day. As a result of that, in 14 months we got to the number one in the New York Times list and we stayed there for three years. We had a book on the New York Times list every week for seven years, because of this rule of five.
[0:53:58.9] MB: That's incredible and such a great and simple, yet powerful tool. Jack, for listeners who want to be able to find the workbook and all of your work online, what is the best place for them to find that?
[0:54:09.8] JC: There's several best places, but the best place to go is thesuccessprinciplesworkbook.com/order. You'll go there and you can order the book once you get there either through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, but you'll get a bonus which is an hour and a half seminar I did called The Success Principles Masterclass, which we recorded for about 2,000 people a couple weeks ago. You'll be able to download that and listen to that. It really takes you through these principles in a much more logical sequential way that we didn't hear on the interview.
Also, you'll be able to download the first chapter of the book digitally before you get it from any of those book dealers. Amazon sold out the first two days and they're restocking. By the time you hear this, they may be. If it says out-of-stock, then go to Barnes & Noble, order it there, or you can order it and wait for it if you're not in a hurry. I would be in a hurry to get this and order it from Barnes & Noble, or Books-A-Million and get the bonuses.
[0:55:05.2] MB: Well Jack, thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing your story and all of this wisdom, a fantastic conversation and so many practical and actionable insights.
[0:55:15.3] JC: Oh, my pleasure, Matt. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
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